Missionary Confidential

Favourite Posts of 2009

While 2009 has been a year (and part of a decade) of ups and downs, both personally and collectively, the past 12 months have been possibly the most fruitful time in my writing since leaving school many, many years ago.  I believe the 72 posts on this blog for 2009 are representative of my creative faucet finally allowing my thoughts to flow.  It’s been quite a journey, and I’m humbled how many have joined me along the year.

A quick look at stats shows that individual visitors to Missionary Confidential more than tripled since the year began, and followers on the RSS feed and Twitter have shown rapid growth from the early single-digit days.  This is mentioned not to make me look good but to show that so many of you have joined in the conversation; there are over 200 comments made on this blog in 2009 (these are legitimate ones from real people; I pluck out all the spam and junk).  You come from countries such as the States, Taiwan, Canada, the United Kingdom (I know it’s not a country), Thailand and Australia, and I thank you for your participation and readership.

For the last Missionary Confidential post before we dive into a new decade, I offer links to some of my favourite 2009 posts from this blog.  These are not reflected in the “Our Best Posts” or “Popular Posts” lists you see to the right columns of the blog: Read More…

Staying Home For Christmas

This is my last original post of 2009, so I just wanted to say thank you to all readers of this blog and wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year wherever God has placed you.

Someone finally asked the right question this year: “Are you staying home for Christmas?”

Over the past few Christmases, many of our nationals have inquired if we were returning home for the holidays.  We always responded that we were staying home for the holidays, not to be cute or trite but to honestly convey how we feel about where God has placed us.

Many national Christians in our field automatically expect us to return to the States for the holidays—because that’s what missionaries from the States have done. Sometimes being called a “missionary” carries a lot of assumptions, one of which in our field is the missionary treating this as an assignment or resume padding, someplace to exit out of or get away from time to time because you’re not from this mission field and have no interest in continuing ministry here.  Even Christian friends in the States assumed we were going to return next year because (this is an actual statement) “don’t all missionaries run out of money by this point and need to come back for fundraising?” Read More…

Preparing For Your Mission

I get a lot of emails from people considering missions work.  If you have already determined your field and are in the process of going, Kevin over at the Life.Outpoured blog has a great series about how to prepare and learn about your mission field’s culture in “Scoping Your Mission”.  Each of the posts are a wealth of information, especially if you are not being sent or prepped by a mission agency (like myself).  Navigating the differences between cultures (even within same-minded Christian cultures in different countries) is probably the most important thing I’ve learned as a missionary.  As someone who “scoped” our field in a similar way, I can strongly recommend these suggestions. Take a look at each:

“Getting To Know Them”

“The Importance of Food”

“Read Their News” (I still do this in the field, even several years into our mission)

Additionally, I think these suggestions are equally important for anyone in ministry (especially church planters) who may be beginning work in another part of their home country.  It may not technically be a “foreign country”, but states (and areas within states) can be considerably different in certain cultural habits, focus or issues.  As a native Californian, I learned this when befriending a co-worker of similar age who was originally from Louisiana; our life experiences and expectations could not have been more different, and most of this was inherent to the local cultures in which we grew up.  Even Californians can be on different extremes depending on their city or county.

Warts and All: Knowing What and When to Reveal

Over at Missional Space, a recent post about William Carey and family difficulties in the mission field drew a good amount of debate.  While most people discussed the appropriateness of his decision to remain in the field, I picked up on another aspect of this: the post stated that most biographies omit these disappointing details.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not very familiar with Carey’s story, so I’m not making a specific judgment call on him.  But it is disconcerting to see that such an important detail of a person’s life would be ignored.  Without being able to query a specific biographer, it’s difficult not to see the omission as a whitewash to paint missions and ministry life in the best possible light.

One of the commenters mentioned that the Bible includes the “warts and all” parts of quite a few stories, and I certainly agree.  Life is messy, difficult, and uncomfortable at times.  Some of our heroes of the Bible were adulterers, struggled with faith and/or obedience to God, had dysfunctional families—essentially, they were imperfect humans (just like us) whom God still chose to love and use anyway.

Missionary work has its “warts” as well, and for me, writing this blog is constantly looking at the fine line between honesty and whining.  I don’t want it to be brutal in the former, nor focusing on the latter.  What motivates me to write is the reality that such a glossy PR spin has been placed on missions work.  Watching missionaries in the field slowly realise that this life is nothing like the brochure, so to speak, is very painful.  Yet I write because I want prospective missionaries to have a fuller understanding of all the facets of missionary life so they can be better equipped for the mission ahead of them. Read More…

How They See Us

I know this video is a huge generalisation, but it answers the question people have asked about how Christians are regarded in Western Europe.  Unfortunately, it is a massive barrier to break down when attempting to establish relationships, and only time and consistency can erase this judgment by stereotype.